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It is shown that John Nyman's criticism of the health policy debate is largely irrelevant to the question of demand-side cost sharing.

Keywords COVID-19; Public health measures; Face masks; Regression discontinuity Abstract We quantify the effect of statewide mask mandates in the United States in 2020. Our regression discontinuity design exploits county-level variation in COVID-19 outcomes across the border between states with and without mandates. State mask mandates reduced new weekly COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions, and deaths by 55, 11, and 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants on average. The effect depends on political leaning with larger effects in Democratic-leaning counties. Our results imply that statewide mandates saved 87,000 lives through December 19, 2020, while a nationwide mandate could have saved 57,000 additional lives. This suggests that mask mandates can help counter pandemics, particularly if widely accepted. Author Affiliation: International Monetary Fund. 700 19th St NW, Washington, DC 20431, United States * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 1 December 2021; Revised 14 October 2022; Accepted 22 December 2022 (footnote)[white star] The views expressed in this working paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. The paper has benefited from very helpful discussions with John Bluedorn, Oya Celasun, Francesco Grigoli, Deniz Igan, Hans Henrik Sievertsen, and Yunhui Zhao. We are also grateful for useful suggestions from Ruchir Agarwal, Marcella Alsan, Philip Barrett, Michael Boerman, Petya Koeva Brooks, Kyle Butts, Francesca Caselli, Nigel Chalk, Paul Elger, Marta Giagheddu, Gita Gopinath, Divya Kirti, Rasmus Bisgaard Larsen, Koshy Mathai, Paolo Mauro, Mico Mrkaic, Christoph Rosenberg, Ippei Shibata, Antonio Spilimbergo, Rui Xu, participants in IMF seminars, and several anonymous referees. (footnote)1 Rui C. Mano and Niels-Jakob H. Hansen contributed equally to all aspects of this paper. Byline: Niels-Jakob H. Hansen [nhansen@imf.org] (*,1), Rui C. Mano [rmano@imf.org] (1)

Keywords Marijuana; Cannabis; Marijuana legalization; Opioid deaths; Medical marijuana; Recreational marijuana Abstract Many states have legalized marijuana over the last two decades, initially for medical purposes and more recently for recreational consumption. Despite prior research, it remains unclear how these policies are related to rates of opioid-involved overdose deaths, which have trended rapidly upwards over time. We examine this question in two ways. First, we replicate and extend previous investigations to show that the prior empirical results are frequently fragile to the choice of specifications and time periods, and probably provide an overly optimistic assessment of the effects of marijuana legalization on opioid deaths. Second, we present new estimates suggesting that legal medical marijuana, particularly when available through retail dispensaries, is associated with higher opioid mortality. The results for recreational marijuana, while less reliable, also indicate that retail sales may be correlated with greater death rates relative to the counterfactual of no legal cannabis. A likely mechanism for these effects is the emergence of illicit fentanyl, which has increased the riskiness of even small positive effects of cannabis legalization on the consumption of opioids. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics, University of Virginia, United States (b) Frank Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy, University of Virginia and National Bureau of Economic Research, 235 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-4893, United States * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 13 September 2022; Revised 2 January 2023; Accepted 4 January 2023 (footnote)[white star] We thank Arnold Ventures for financial support, the authors of some papers we replicate for providing us with data, Ashley Bradford, David Bradford and Rosalie Pacula for advice and guidance on marijuana legalization policies, and Bradley Katcher for research assistance. We also thank participants of the 5th Annual Caribbean Health Economics Symposium, the 2022 American Economic Association annual meeting, and workshop participants at George Mason University, Monash University, the University of Sydney, and the University of Wisconsin for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Ruhm has served as a plaintiff's consultant and Mathur has provided support to defendants in ongoing opioid litigation. Neither role was related to any aspect of this study. The views expressed herein are those of the authors only. Byline: Neil K. Mathur (a), Christopher J. Ruhm [ruhm@virginia.edu] (b,*)

Keywords Desert locust swarms; Agricultural shocks; Local markets; Child health Abstract This paper investigates the consequences of the 2004 locust plague in Mali. We argue that in agricultural economies with a single harvest per year, this type of shock can affect households through two channels: first, a speculative/anticipatory effect that kicks in during the growing season, followed by a local crop failure effect after harvest. We document a substantial impact of the plague on crop price inflation before the harvest. Regarding health setbacks, children subject only to the speculative/anticipatory effect suffered as much as those exposed to the actual crop failure effect. The latter is more severe for children born in isolated areas. Author Affiliation: (a) Università di Bologna, P. Scaravilli 2, 40126, BO, Italy (b) Bocconi University, via Roentgen 1, 20136, MI, Italy (c) Toulouse School of Economics, University of Toulouse-Capitole, 1 Esplanade de l'Université, 31080, Toulouse, Cedex 06, France * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 7 February 2022; Revised 19 November 2022; Accepted 24 November 2022 (footnote)[white star] An earlier version of this paper circulated under the title 'Ancient Plagues in Modern Times: The Impact of Desert Locust Invasions on Child Health'. We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for valuable comments and suggestions. We are very thankful to Joan Llull and Hannes Mueller for their support and invaluable guidance, as well as comments and suggestions in Mannheim, Einaudi Foundation in Turin, Barcelona GSE, UAB, UPF, ENS-Lyon, NEUDC, CREST, PSE, and EUHEA. Bruno Conte acknowledges financial support from Einaudi Foundation through the Roberto Einaudi Research Fellowship. Lavinia Piemontese acknowledges financial support from the IDEX LYON from the University of Lyon under grant ANR-16-IDEX-0005 (French National Research Agency, 'Programme Investissements d'Avenir') and financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through an FPI Grant at CSIC-IAE Barcelona. Augustin Tapsoba acknowledges funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir program) and financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through an FPI Grant at Barcelona GSE. The usual disclaimers apply. Byline: Bruno Conte [b.conte@unibo.it] (a,*), Lavinia Piemontese [lavinia.piemontese@unibocconi.it] (b), Augustin Tapsoba [augustin.tapsoba@tse-fr.eu] (c)

Keywords Retirement; Informal caregiving; Pension reform; Population aging Abstract This paper analyzes the impact of retirement on informal care provision using nationally representative panel data from Australia. To establish causality, we exploit the gender and cohort specific eligibility age for the Australian Age Pension. We find no evidence of an impact of retirement (status or duration) on co-residential or extra-residential unpaid care provided by older individuals. The null effect of retirement on informal caregiving does not differ by the type of care recipient. Furthermore, we demonstrate that older people who postpone retirement reduce the amount of time they spend on other non-market activities to resolve the time conflict between unpaid care and extended employment. Our analysis indicates that the Australian Age Pension reform aimed at working career prolongation has not crowded out the supply of informal care. Author Affiliation: (a) College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Australia (b) Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Germany * Corresponding author at: College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Australia. Article History: Received 13 March 2022; Revised 6 November 2022; Accepted 24 November 2022 (footnote)[white star] We are grateful to the Editor (Maarten Lindeboom) and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. This paper uses the restricted unit record data from the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the authors and should not be attributed to either DSS or the Melbourne Institute. Byline: Rong Zhu [rong.zhu@flinders.edu.au] (a,b,*), Ilke Onur [ilke.onur@flinders.edu.au] (a)

Keywords Maternal depression; Human capital; ALSPAC Abstract We here address the causal relationship between the maternal genetic risk for depression and child human capital using UK birth-cohort data. We find that an increase of one standard deviation (SD) in the maternal polygenic risk score for depression reduces their children's cognitive and non-cognitive skill scores by 5 to 7% of a SD throughout adolescence. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests addressing, among others, concerns about pleiotropy and dynastic effects. Our Gelbach decomposition analysis suggests that the strongest mediator is genetic nurture (through maternal depression itself), with genetic inheritance playing only a marginal role. Author Affiliation: (a) Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), Luxembourg (b) University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg (c) Paris School of Economics - CNRS, France (d) Bocconi University, Italy * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 9 March 2022; Revised 9 December 2022; Accepted 9 December 2022 (footnote)â° We are grateful to the Editor and two anonymous referees for very useful suggestions. We would like to thank Aysu Okbay for her comments and assistance with the GWAS summary data, and Niels Rietveld for sharing his codes with us. We are very grateful to Sonia Bhalotra, Pietro Biroli, Dalton Conley, Maria Cotofan, Neil Davies, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Emilia Del Bono, Martin Fernandez-Sanchez, Sarah Flèche, Richard Layard, Andrew Oswald, Steve Pischke, Alois Stutzer and Felix Tropf, and participants at the First Social Science Genetics Paris meeting, the IGSS conference, the EuHEA, the University of Luxembourg, and the University of Oxford Wellbeing seminars for useful comments. We are extremely grateful to all the families who took part in this study, the midwives for their help in recruiting them, and the whole ALSPAC team, which includes interviewers, computer and laboratory technicians, clerical workers, research scientists, volunteers, managers, receptionists and nurses. The UK Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust (Grant ref: 217065/Z/19/Z) and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. A comprehensive list of Grants funding is available on the ALSPAC website (http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/external/documents/grant-acknowledgements.pdf). Genotype data were generated by Sample Logistics and Genotyping Facilities at Wellcome Sanger Institute and LabCorp (Laboratory Corporation of America) using support from 23andMe. This publication is the work of the authors and all authors will serve as guarantors for the contents of this paper. Andrew Clark acknowledges financial support from the EUR grant ANR-17-EURE-0001. This paper previously circulated as 'Maternal Depression and Child Human Capital: A Genetic Instrumental Variable Approach'. Byline: Giorgia Menta (a), Anthony Lepinteur [anthony.lepinteur@uni.lu] (b,*), Andrew E. Clark (b,c), Simone Ghislandi (d), Conchita D'Ambrosio (b)

This paper takes a different approach to estimating demand for medical care that uses the negotiated prices between insurers and providers as an instrument. The instrument is viewed as a textbook "cost shifting" instrument that impacts plan offerings, but is unobserved by consumers. The paper finds a price elasticity of demand of around -0.20, matching the elasticity found in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. The paper also studies within-market variation in demand for prescription drugs and other medical care services and obtains comparable price elasticity estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords Incentives; Persistence; Health insurance; Subsidy; Randomized experiment Highlights * Temporary incentives are offered in anticipation of persistent effects that are seldom estimated. * A Philippines health insurance experiment finds persistent effects of temporary incentives. * A 50% premium subsidy has a small but highly persistent effect. * Application assistance to those initially unresponsive to the subsidy has a larger but less persistent effect. * Persistence is positively related to compliers' ex ante willingness to pay for insurance. Abstract Temporary incentives are offered in anticipation of persistent effects that are seldom estimated. We use a nationwide randomized experiment in the Philippines to estimate effects of two incentives for health insurance three years after their withdrawal. We find that both temporary incentives had persistent effects on enrollment. A premium subsidy had a small but highly persistent effect. Application assistance offered to those initially unresponsive to the subsidy had a much larger but less persistent effect. The subsidy persuaded those with higher initial stated willingness to pay to enroll and keep enrolling. The offer of application assistance to initial non-compliers with the subsidy achieved a larger immediate effect by drawing in those who stated they valued insurance less and were less likely to re-enroll when the incentives were withdrawn. Author Affiliation: (a) Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Tinbergen Institute Netherlands (b) School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman Philippines (c) Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (d) Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam Netherlands * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 17 March 2020; Revised 20 December 2021; Accepted 21 December 2021 (footnote)â° Authors' contributions: JC and CT designed the original experiment and sampling, supervised fieldwork, and managed data; AB, JC, OO'D and KvW conceived the research objective and designed the study; AB and KvW designed survey instruments; OO'D and KvW designed and conducted data analysis; KvW produced first draft; AB, JC and OO'D edited draft and approved paper; OO'D finalised submitted paper and conducted revisions. Byline: Aurélien Baillon [baillon@ese.eur.nl] (a), Joseph Capuno [jjcapuno@gmail.com] (b), Owen O'Donnell [odonnell@ese.eur.nl] (a,c,d,*), Carlos Antonio Tan Jr. [carloztan@yahoo.com] (b), Kim van Wilgenburg [vanwilgenburg@eshpm.eur.nl] (d)

Keywords Health endowment; Earnings endowment; Skill investments; Education; Intrafamily resource allocation; Health; Longevity; Twin study; Minnesota twin registry; Socioeconomic survey of twins Abstract We analyze data from the Minnesota Twin Registry (MTR), combined with the Socioeconomic Survey of Twins (SST), and new mortality data, and contribute to two bodies of literature. First, we demonstrate a beneficial causal effect of education on health and longevity in contrast to other twin-based studies of the US population, which show little or no effect of education on health. Second, we present evidence that is consistent with parental compensation through education for differences in their children's endowments that predict health, but find no evidence that parents reinforce differences in endowments that predict earnings. We argue that there is a bias towards detecting reinforcement both in this paper and in the literature. Despite this bias, we still find statistical evidence of compensating behavior. We account for observed and unobserved confounding factors, sample selection bias, and measurement error in education. Author Affiliation: (a) The College of William & Mary, 300 James Blair Dr., Chancellor's Hall, Room 317, Williamsburg VA 23185, USA (b) Department of Economics, The University of Georgia, USA (c) Department of Psychology, The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 4 November 2020; Revised 19 October 2021; Accepted 8 November 2021 (footnote)[white star] A version of this paper was presented to the 2019 NBER Health Economics Program Meeting, Boston, USA; The Third Meeting of the Society of Economics of the Household, Lisbon, Portugal; IZA World Labor Conference, Berlin, Germany; Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Research Seminar; Southern Economic Association 87th Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL; and to the Economics Work-in-Progress Lunch Seminar at the College of William & Mary. We thank participants of these meetings for helpful suggestions and stimulating discussions. For their comments and suggestions, the authors wish to thank Kathy Anderson, Andrew Goodman-Bacon, Ana Balsa, Rong Hai, Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano, and anonymous NSF and journal referees. The authors are especially grateful to Jere Behrman for sharing the data from the Socioeconomic Survey of Twins and commenting on our drafts, and to Federico Gutierrez for his considerable help in conceiving and designing the analysis of schooling allocation in the family. The authors are grateful to Jack Buckman and Renee Garrow for their research assistance, and to William Anderson, Xiaoyu (Nancy) Chen, Isabel Haber, Eli Rothleder, Max Sacher, Katia Savelyeva, and Nathan Troutman for their proofreading of the manuscript. Ward and Savelyev gratefully acknowledge support from the NSF 1460003 grant, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Faculty-Graduate Student Collaboration Grant, and the Kirk Dornbush Summer Research Grant. Savelyev also benefited from the financial support of the Grey Fund at Vanderbilt and research support from the College of William & Mary. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. (footnote)1 Assistant Professor of Economics (footnote)2 Lecturer (footnote)3 Hathaway Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology (footnote)4 Regents Professor of Psychology Byline: Peter A. Savelyev [pasavelyev@wm.edu] (*,1,a), Benjamin C. Ward (2,b), Robert F. Krueger (3,c), Matt McGue (4,c)

Keywords Covid-19; Lockdown; Essential sectors Abstract This paper investigates how economic activity impacted Covid-19 infections and all-cause mortality. To this purpose, we exploit the distribution of essential sectors, which were exempted from a national lockdown enacted in Italy during the first wave of the pandemic, across provinces and rich administrative data in a difference-in-differences framework. We find that a standard deviation increase in essential workers per built square kilometre leads to 1.1 additional daily cases and 0.32 additional daily deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that about one third (47,000) of the Covid-19 cases and about 13% (13,000) of deaths between March and May of 2020 can be attributed to the less stringent lockdown for these sectors. The effect is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, we find that the local health system played a relevant role in reducing fatalities with a higher number of general practitioners and hospital beds per capita being associated with a lower mortality. Author Affiliation: (a) CSEF - University Federico II, UCFS Uppsala University, INPS (b) INPS, University of Roma Tre, IZA (c) University of Bologna, Centre for Economic Performance - London School of Economics and Political Science, IZA * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 22 February 2021; Revised 15 November 2021; Accepted 1 December 2021 (footnote)[white star] This paper was previously circulated under the title Partial lockdown and the spread of Covid-19: lessons from the Italian case. We thank the editor Luigi Siciliani, and two anonymous referees. We also thanks Federico Belotti, Vincenzo Carrieri, Daniele Checchi, Luca Citino, Joanna A. Kopinska, Maarten Lindeboom and all participants to AIEL Covid seminar series for early comments to this work. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Italian Social Security Institute (INPS). We are solely responsible for any and all errors. Byline: Edoardo Di Porto (*,a), Paolo Naticchioni (b), Vincenzo Scrutinio (c)

Keywords Trade competition; Job displacement; Chronic health conditions; Adult mortality Abstract Recent research in the U.S. links trade-induced job displacement to deaths of despair. Should we expect the same mortality response in developing countries? This paper analyzes the effect of a trade-induced negative shock to manufacturing employment on leading causes of mortality in Mexico between 1998 and 2013. I exploit cross-municipality variation in trade exposure based on differences in industry specialization before China's accession to the WTO in 2001 to identify labor-demand shocks that are concentrated in manufacturing. I find trade-induced job loss increased mortality from diabetes, raised obesity rates, reduced physical activity, and lowered access to health insurance. These deaths were offset by declines in mortality from ischemic heart disease and chronic pulmonary disease. These findings highlight that negative employment shocks have heterogeneous impacts on mortality in developing countries, where falling incomes lead to less access to health care and nutritious food, but also reduce alcohol and tobacco use. Author Affiliation: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Department of Applied Economics (Dulbea), Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50, Brussels 1050, Belgium Article History: Received 15 September 2020; Revised 23 August 2021; Accepted 20 September 2021 (footnote)[white star] I am grateful to my advisers, Richard Akresh, Rebecca Thornton, Alex Bartik, and Mark Borgschulte for their valuable guidance and support. I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. This paper has greatly benefited from conversations with professors and PhD students at the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as from comments by seminar participants at various other institutions and conferences. Byline: Sofía Fernández Guerrico [Sofia.Fernandez.Guerrico@ulb.be]

Keywords Kidney Exchange; Kidney Transplant; Efficiency; Simulation Abstract This paper studies a general kidney exchange model with compatible patient-donor pairs, incompatible patient-donor pairs, single donors, and patients on the waiting list. We derive an explicit formula of the maximal number of feasible kidney transplants under several sizes of cycles and chains of exchange, analyze the effect of different ways of exchange on efficiency, and provide substantial simulation results based on the USA data. Our results further show that kidney exchange can be decentralized for relatively large populations, and that allowing compatible pairs and single donors to exchange with incompatible pairs can significantly increase the number of feasible kidney transplants. A more general model of two-category type-compatible exchanges is also established. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Economics, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, 611130, China (b) Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 21 December 2019; Revised 2 June 2021; Accepted 14 September 2021 (footnote)[white star] We have no relevant material financial interests tied to the research described in this paper. We are extremely grateful to Karl Claxton and Luigi Siciliani for their numerous helpful comments and suggestions at various stages of this research. We also wish to thank Tommy Andersson, Jorgen Kratz, Utku Ünver, Zhan Wang, the editor and anonymous referees for their very helpful feedback, and to participants at various seminars, workshops and conferences for their advice. Byline: Yao Cheng [chengyao@swufe.edu.cn] (a), Zaifu Yang [zaifu.yang@york.ac.uk] (*,b)

Keywords Rational addiction; General versus standard specification; Time-consistency; Naïvete; GMM Abstract This paper addresses one of the main empirical problems associated with rational addiction theory, namely, that its derived demand equation is not empirically distinguishable from those of models with forward-looking behavior but with time-inconsistent preferences. Using an encompassing general specification of the rational addiction model we derive a microfounded test of time-consistency. The test allows us to distinguish between time-consistent versus time-inconsistent naïve agents. The results obtained from a panel of Russian individuals conform to the theoretical predictions of the rational addiction model and the proposed test for time-consistency does not reject the hypothesis that Russian cigarette consumers are time-consistent. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento and IZA, Via Verdi, 26 Trento (I) 38122 (b) Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena, Piazza San Francesco, 7/8 Siena (I) 53100 * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 6 April 2020; Revised 6 October 2021; Accepted 18 October 2021 (footnote)[white star] We are grateful to the Editor Mathias Kifmann and two anonymous Reviewers for their helpful and valuable comments and suggestions. Comments from the participants of the 12th European Conference on Health Economics, Maastricht, the Netherlands are gratefully acknowledged. We also thank Pierpaolo Pierani for his input on a much earlier version of the paper, Daniel Kaliski and Davide Dragone for very useful comments on this version of the paper. Byline: Luca Piccoli [luca.piccoli@unitn.it] (a,*), Silvia Tiezzi [silvia.tiezzi@unisi.it] (b)

Keywords Hospital competition; Myopic behaviour; Forward-looking behaviour; Rational expectations; Switching costs Highlights * Full rationality may be detrimental to patients' health gains. * Quality provision is higher under naïve than under myopic patient expectations. * Quality ranges from highest to lowest under rational patient expectations. * Lower switching costs reduce quality under all expectations, possibly except rational. * Optimal price regulation depends on patient expectations and switching costs. Abstract Switching costs and persistent preferences generate demand inertia and link current and future choices of hospital. Using a model of hospital competition with demand inertia, we investigate the effect of patient expectations on quality. We consider three types of expectations. Myopic patients choose a hospital based on current variables alone, forward-looking but naïve patients consider the future but assume that quality remains constant, and forward-looking and rational patients foresee the evolution of quality. We rank quality provision and show that it is higher under naïve than myopic expectations, while quality under rational expectations may be highest or lowest. This result also holds for patients' health gains, suggesting that rationality may hurt patients. Additionally, policies to reduce switching costs lead to lower quality, possibly unless patients are rational and cost substitutability between output and quality is sufficiently strong. Finally, we show how optimal price regulation depends on expectations and switching costs. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Economics/NIPE, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, Braga 4710-057, Portugal (b) Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 2 September 2020; Revised 29 August 2021; Accepted 2 September 2021 (footnote)[white star] We thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank Luigi Siciliani, Pedro Pita Barros, Ricardo Gonçalves, Robert Nuscheler, and Oddvar Kaarbøe for their discussion. Finally, we address a word of acknowledgement to Pedro Pita Barros and Lise Rochaix for the conversation that gave rise to this paper. This paper is financed by National Funds of the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the project UID/ECO/03182/2019. Sá acknowledges the PhD Studentship SFRH/BD/129073/2017 awarded by the FCT and financed by National Funds of the FCT and the European Social Fund. Byline: Luís Sá [luis.sa@eeg.uminho.pt] (*,a), Odd Rune Straume [o.r.straume@eeg.uminho.pt] (a,b)

Keywords Medicare; Part D; Health insurance; Merger; Concentration; Premiums; Heterogeneity; Antitrust Abstract Medicare Part D plans provide prescription drug coverage to 45 million seniors. The recent past has seen significant consolidation amongst plan providers, notable CVS's 2018 acquisition of Aetna and Cigna's 2018 acquisition of Express Scripts. In this paper, we analyze the effect of consolidation of standalone Part D plan providers on premiums using plausibly exogenous variation in concentration induced by the 2011 merger between CVS and Universal American. We find that the increase in concentration for standalone Medicare Part D plans that resulted from this merger led to higher average premiums, a total of nearly $170 million per year. We find further that, consistent with the assumptions behind standard antitrust practice, the effects of the increase in concentration were heterogeneous: moderately (or more) concentrated markets that saw a meaningful increase in concentration saw significant increases in premiums, while premiums in other markets did not change significantly. Author Affiliation: Bates White Economic Consulting, Bates White Economic Consulting, USA * Corresponding author at: 2001K Street NW, North Building, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20006. Article History: Received 24 March 2020; Revised 9 August 2021; Accepted 24 August 2021 (footnote) This paper is not purported to represent the views of the Department of Justice, Bates White Economic Consulting, or anyone other than the authors. Nicholas Hill was retained by the DOJ to testify on its behalf in a Tunney Act proceeding concerning the CVS-Aetna merger. Mathis Wagner worked with Nicholas Hill on the same matter. We would like to thank Bridgette Degnan and Brian Leibowitz for excellent research assistance and anonymous referees, Cory Capps, Francesco Decarolis, Laura Kmitch, Malika Krishna, Margaret Loudermilk, Gloria Sheu, Chad Syverson, and Scott Thompson for insightful feedback and comments. All remaining errors are our own. Byline: Nicholas Hill, Mathis Wagner [Mathis.Wagner@bateswhite.com] (*)

Keywords Driving under the influence; Road collisions; Health; Alcohol; Crime Abstract Reducing drink drive limits is generally regarded an effective strategy to save lives on the road. Using several new administrative data sources, we evaluate the effect of a stricter limit introduced in Scotland in 2014. This reduction had no effect on drink driving and road collisions. Estimates from a supply-of-offenses function suggests that the reform did not have much ex-ante scope for sizeable effects. The unavailability of cheaper alternative means of transportation and weak law enforcement seem to have been the main channels behind the lack of an impact. We find no externality on a wide range of domains, from alcohol consumption to criminal activities other than drink driving. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Essex, United Kingdom (b) University of Bath, United Kingdom * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 17 December 2020; Revised 27 April 2021; Accepted 12 June 2021 (footnote) We are grateful to the Editor (Kitt Carpenter) and two anonymous referees for constructive and insightful comments on the paper. Michèle Belot, Sonia Bhalotra, Tom Crossley, Mirko Draca, Eleonora Fichera, Markus Gehrsitz, Andrea Ichino, Max Kellogg, Peter Kuhn, Olivier Marie, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Santiago Oliveros, Michel Serafinelli, and Wilbert van der Klaauw and seminar participants at the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Edinburgh, Essex, Oxford, Turin, Warwick, the European University Institute and the European Commission provided many helpful suggestions. We thank Annalivia Polselli for excellent research assistance. This paper is accompanied by Supplementary Material in the Online Appendix available at: www.mwpweb.eu/JonathanJames/. Byline: Marco Francesconi (a), Jonathan James [j.james@bath.ac.uk] (*,b)

Keywords Cervical cancer; Spillovers; PROGRESA Abstract This paper exploits the randomized research design of a large welfare program--PROGRESA--to study the existence in rural Mexico of spillover effects in the propensity to screen for gender- and non-gender-specific conditions. I find significant evidence of increased demand for Papanicolaou cervical-cancer screening among women ineligible for the Conditional Cash Transfer, yet no evidence of similar externalities in non-gender specific tests, such as blood-pressure and blood-sugar checks. Certain pieces of evidence are suggestive of the weakening of the social norm related to husbands' opposition to screening of their wives as one of the possible drivers of the indirect effect. Author Affiliation: World Bank Group, United States * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 5 January 2019; Revised 21 April 2021; Accepted 22 April 2021 (footnote)[white star] The paper was previously circulated under the title 'Spillover Effects in Healthcare Programs: Evidence on Social Norms and Information Sharing'. I am indebted to Vincenzo Di Maro, for his contribution at an earlier stage in this project. I thank Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Samuel Berlinski, Matteo Bobba, Daniele Condorelli, Fred Finan, Edward Miguel, Grant Miller, Enrico Moretti, Monica Orozco, Carol Propper, Imran Rasul and Marcos Vera Hernandez and seminar participants at Central European University, Inter-American Development Bank, IRVAPP, Tanaka Business School, Tilburg University, University of California at Berkeley, University College London. All errors remain my own. Byline: Ciro Avitabile [cavitabile@worldbank.org] (*)

Keywords Mortality; Temperature; Nuclear energy; Energy prices; Precautionary principle; Fukushima Daiichi accident Abstract This paper provides novel evidence of the unintended health effects stemming from the halt in nuclear power production after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. After the accident, nuclear power stations ceased operation and nuclear power was replaced by fossil fuels, causing an increase in electricity prices. We find that this increase led to a reduction in energy consumption, which caused an increase in mortality during very cold temperatures, given the protective role that climate control plays against the elements. Our results contribute to the debate surrounding the use of nuclear as a source of energy by documenting a yet unexplored health benefit from using nuclear power, and more broadly to regulatory policy approaches implemented during periods of scientific uncertainty about potential adverse effects. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 W. 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, United States (b) IZA Institute of Labor Economics and National Bureau of Economic Research (c) Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya City University, 1 Yamanohata, Mizuho-cho, Mizuho-ku, Nagoya 467-8501, Japan (d) Department of Economics, University of Verona, Via Cantarane 24, Verona 37129, Italy (e) Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark, Produktionstorvet 424, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 13 November 2020; Revised 26 February 2021; Accepted 13 July 2021 (footnote) This paper previously circulated under the title 'Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident.' We thank Michele Baggio, Geoffrey Barrows, Francois Cohen, Olivier Deschenes, Tatyana Deryugina, Lucija Muehlenbachs, Peter Martinsson, Jisung Park, Alberto Salvo, Reed Walker, and Hendrik Wolff for their suggestions. The authors would also like to thank for their comments participants at the 2020 Annual ASSA meeting, 6th IZA Workshop on 'Environment and Labor Market,' 6th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists, Workshop on 'Environment & Health: An Economic Perspective' at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, Cachan, Asian Growth Research Institute, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 6th IAERE Conference, 23rd Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, and seminar participants at American University, Asian Development Bank, Hitotsubashi University, Nagoya City University, OSLO MET, Princeton University, Shinshu University, University of Arizona, University of Innsbruck, University of Gothenburg, and University of Verona. All errors and omissions are our own responsibility. The research reported in this paper is not the result of a for-pay consulting relationship. Our employers do not have a financial interest in the topic of the paper which might constitute a conflict of interest. We acknowledge data support from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan that provided mortality counts by cause and age class upon special tabulation request. We also acknowledge financial support from the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20S11821) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan, JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K01632, Murata Science Foundation, Shikishima Research and Cultural Foundation, and University of Verona. Byline: Matthew Neidell [mn2191@columbia.edu] (a,b,*), Shinsuke Uchida [suchida@econ.nagoya-cu.ac.jp] (c), Marcella Veronesi [mver@dtu.dk] (d,e)

Keywords Health spillovers; Health behavior; Consumer learning Abstract I study how family spillovers shape healthcare consumption through two main sources: a learning channel whereby family members share information about their health insurance and the effectiveness of healthcare, and a behavioral channel whereby risk perception and habits are shared and transmitted. I exploit two types of sudden health shocks to identify a causal effect operating through each channel: a spouse's non-fatal heart attack or stroke and a severe injury to a child. I incorporate these shocks into an event-study framework to quantify the effect of spillovers on healthcare consumption of a non-injured adult family member. I find a significant behavioral spillover effect of an increase of more than 200% in medical expenditure of preventive care over a four-year horizon. Moreover, I find a strong and persistent learning spillover that amounts to an average increase of more than 150% in medical expenditure relative to prior to the health shock, and I demonstrate that this effect promotes health investment. While the first result is in line with previous findings in the literature, the second is novel. Author Affiliation: Tel Aviv University, Coller School of Management, Israel * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 12 September 2019; Revised 29 June 2021; Accepted 11 July 2021 (footnote)[white star] I thank Hanming Fang, Petra Todd, Juan Pablo Atal, Olivia Mitchell, Kathleen Hui, Emilio Borghesan, Alejandro Sanchez Becerra, Gorkem Bostanci, and Gabrielle Vasey for their useful feedback. The editor and two anonymous referees provided valuable comments that improved the paper significantly. This paper is based on the second chapter of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. This research was not supported by grant funding from agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. I am grateful to the RAND investigators for providing well documented publicly available data. Byline: Michal Hodor [michalhodor@tauex.tau.ac.il] (*)

Keywords Road traffic accidents; Political cycle; Municipalities; Tickets for traffic violations Abstract Road traffic accidents mean lost productivity and medical expenditures. We explain trends in traffic accidents as a function of the political cycle using municipal data from Italy. We show that during municipal election years, the accident rate increases by 1.5%, with a 2% increase in the injury rate but no effect on the fatality rate. The effects are stronger in the quarter prior to the election quarter, when the electoral campaign is at its zenith, and in the second quarter after the election for the new elected mayor. We show that this is the result of a decrease in tickets for traffic violations (rate and revenues) during election years. Our results are robustly driven by the municipal political cycle defined in different ways, and their magnitude and direction are not explained by the spillover effects between municipalities. Proximity to a national police station reduces the impact of local elections on injury rates. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Veronna, Italy (b) Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University, Czechia (c) University of Milan, Italy Article History: Received 28 June 2020; Revised 12 January 2021; Accepted 15 January 2021 (footnote)[white star] We thank Massimo Anelli, Leah Boustan, Emanuele Bracco, Adriana Corredor Waldron, Janet Currie, Cesar Martinelli, Marian Moszoro, Petra Persson, Thomas Stratmann, two refereees, the editor Christopher Carpenter, and the participants at the seminar at Princeton University, George Mason University, the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (Regensburg); the University of Economics, Prague; the 2019 European Public Choice Annual Conference (Hebrew University); the 9th European Meeting of the Urban Economics Association (Amsterdam), and the 2019 Brunico Workshop of Political Economy for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. The current version of the paper provides new evidence with respect to the previously circulated WP (CERGE-EI WP 633/2018). We would like to thank Giulia Mugellini (Polis-Lombardia) and Diego Gasperini (Ufficio di Statistica della Regione del Veneto) for providing us with the traffic accident data on Lombardy and Veneto, as well as The Linh Bao Nguyen and Sofia Terragni for their excellent work as our research assistants. Byline: Paola Bertoli (a,b), Veronica Grembi (c)

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.04.005 Byline: Adriana Camacho, Daniel Mejia Abstract: This paper exploits variations in aerial spraying across time and space in Colombia and employs a panel of individual health records in order to study the causal effects of the aerial spraying of herbicides (glyphosate) on short-term health-related outcomes. Our results show that exposure to the herbicide used in aerial spraying campaigns increases the number of medical consultations related to dermatological and respiratory illnesses, as well as the number of miscarriages. These findings are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, which compare the prevalence of these medical conditions for the same person under different levels of exposure to the herbicide used in the aerial spraying program over a period of 5 years. Also, our results are robust to controlling for the extent of illicit coca cultivation in the municipality of residence. Author Affiliation: Department of Economics, CEDE and CESED, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia.sup.1 Article History: Received 21 August 2015; Revised 21 April 2017; Accepted 25 April 2017 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We would like to thank Norman Loayza, Michael Clemens, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Universidad de los Andes, the ISSDP Conference, and the Center for Global Development for their helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Juan Pablo Cote, Lorena Caro, Shelby Lin and Simon Borrero for their excellent research assistance. We are grateful for financial support from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) Grant #RES-167 -25-0593 (The Economic and Social Consequences of Armed Conflict in Colombia: Evidence for Designing Effective Policies in Conflict and Post-Conflict Regions) and the Center for Global Development (CDG). Finally, we would like to thank the Colombian Ministry of Health for providing us with the data used in this paper. The usual caveats apply.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.02.001 Byline: Michael Dalton (a), Daniel LaFave (b) Abstract: The behavior of noncoresident family members motivates much of the literature on consumption smoothing, risk-sharing, and informal networks, yet little is known empirically on the topic due to a lack of data simultaneously observing multiple households in an extended family. This study utilizes genealogically linked longitudinal data to examine how extended family networks insure against financial risks from severely limiting health conditions. We find that nonhealth consumption of unmarried households declines in response to worsening health, whereas married households smooth expenditures in a way that is consistent with full insurance. Families mitigate losses by reallocating home production, drawing down home equity, holding formal health insurance, collecting social security, and receiving transfers from noncoresident relatives. We illustrate that the costs of health shocks are transmitted throughout family networks, and that noncoresident children draw down their assets and consumption when responding to a parent's health decline. Author Affiliation: (a) Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States (b) Department of Economics, Colby College, Waterville, ME, USA Article History: Received 2 June 2015; Revised 2 February 2017; Accepted 4 February 2017 Article Note: (footnote) [star] Michael Dalton, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC dalton.michael@bls.gov. Daniel LaFave, Department of Economics, Colby College, Waterville, ME 04901 daniel.lafave@colby.edu. This paper uses components of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics public use dataset produced and distributed by the Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (2012). The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Bureau of Labor Statistics., [star][star] Special thanks for valuable comments are due to Michael Chernew, Peter Arcidiacono, David Blau, Ryan Brown, Patrick Coate, V. Joseph Hotz, John Maluccio, Marjorie McElroy, Duncan Thomas, and seminar participants in the Duke Applied Microeconomics Workshop, Population Association of America, Southern Economic Association, Liberal Arts Development Conference, Bowdoin College, University of Maine, Middlebury College, and Catholic University.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.12.003 Byline: Owen Thompson Abstract: This paper estimates the effect of US public health insurance programs for children on health. Previous work in this area has typically focused on the relationship between current program eligibility and current health. But because health is a stock variable which reflects the cumulative influence of health inputs, it would be preferable to estimate the impact of total program eligibility during childhood on longer-term health outcomes. I provide such estimates by using longitudinal data to construct Medicaid and CHIP eligibility measures that are observed from birth through age 18 and estimating the effect of cumulative program exposure on a variety of health outcomes observed in early adulthood. To account for the endogeneity of program eligibility, I exploit variation in Medicaid and CHIP generosity across states and over time for children of different ages. I find that an additional year of public health insurance eligibility during childhood improves a summary index of adult health by.079 standard deviations, and substantially reduces health limitations, chronic conditions and asthma prevalence while improving self-rated health. Author Affiliation: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, United States Article History: Received 20 October 2015; Revised 2 December 2016; Accepted 11 December 2016 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported through an Emerging Scholars grant from the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty. I thank Barbara Wolfe, Jason Fletcher, Kegon Tan and seminar participants at the University of Maryland and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for helpful comments and Janet Currie, Sandra Decker and Wanchuan Lin for generously sharing Medicaid and CHIP eligibility data. The data and code used to generate this paper's results are available at the author's personal webpage, https://sites.google.com/site/othompsonecon/.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.11.002 Byline: Davide Dragone (a), Nicolas R. Ziebarth (b) Abstract: This paper develops a dynamic model to illustrate how diet and body weight change when novel food products become available to consumers. We propose a microfounded test to empirically discriminate between habit and taste formation in intertemporal preferences. Moreover, we show that 'novelty consumption' and endogenous preferences can explain the persistent correlation between economic development and obesity. By empirically studying the German reunification, we find that East Germans consumed more novel Western food and gained more weight than West Germans when a larger variety of food products became readily accessible after the fall of the Wall. The observed consumption patterns suggest that food consumption features habit formation. Author Affiliation: (a) University of Bologna, Department of Economics, Office 352, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy (b) Cornell University, USA; DIW Berlin & IZA Bonn Article History: Received 20 January 2016; Revised 23 November 2016; Accepted 26 November 2016 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We would like to thank John Cawley, Charles Courtemanche, Gabriella Conti, Monica Deza, Richard Dunn, Pilar Garcia-Gomez, Therese Bago d'Uva, David Frisvold, Anne Gielen, Lawrence Jin, Martin Karlsson, Paolo Masella, Christoph Moser, Stefan Pichler, Holger Strulik, Darjusch Tafreschi, Eddy van Doorslaer, and conference participants at the 2014 ASHEcon conference and the 2015 Essen Health Conference as well as seminar participants at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich, the Applied Economics seminar of the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam, the Food Economics seminar at the University of Toulouse, the CEGE Research Colloquium at the University of Gottingen, the Department of Economics of the University of Bologna, the Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche) and the Institute on Health Economics, Health Behaviors and Disparities at Cornell University. In particular we thank Frank Sloan, Therese Nilsson, and Katharina Walliczek for excellent discussions of this work. We take responsibility for all remaining errors in and shortcomings of the article. We would also like to thank Peter Eibich and Aline Pa[sz]lack for excellent research assistance and Philip Susser and Lawrence Jin for an excellent editing of this paper. The research reported in this paper is not the result of a for-pay consulting relationship. Our employers do not have a financial interest in the topic of the paper that might constitute a conflict of interest.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.08.008 Byline: Helmuth Cremer, Jean-Marie Lozachmeur, Pierre Pestieau Abstract: This paper studies the design of long term care (LTC) insurance contracts in the presence of ex post moral hazard. While this problem bears some similarity with the study of health insurance (Blomqvist, 1997) the significance of informal LTC affects the problem in several crucial ways. It introduces the potential crowding out of informal care by market care financed through insurance coverage. Furthermore, the information structure becomes more intricate. Informal care is not publicly observable and, unlike the insurer, caregivers know the true needs of their relatives. We determine the optimal second-best contract and show that the optimal reimbursement rate can be written as an A-B-C expression a la Diamond (1998). These terms respectively reflect the efficiency loss as measured by the inverse of the demand elasticity, the distribution of needs and the preferences for risk sharing. Interestingly, informal care directly affects only the first term. More precisely the first term decreases with the presence and significance of informal care. Roughly speaking this means that an efficient LTC insurance contract should offer lower (marginal) reimbursement rates than its counterpart in a health insurance context. Article History: Received 8 September 2015; Revised 2 May 2016; Accepted 28 August 2016 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This paper was presented at the EHEW in Toulouse. We thank all the participants and particularly our discussant, Jan Boone, for their comments and suggestions. We are also grateful to the editor Martin Chalkley and three referees for their constructive comments. Financial support from the Chaire 'Marche des risques et creation de valeur' of the FdR/SCOR is gratefully acknowledged.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.05.005 Byline: Simon Sobstad Bensnes Abstract: Pollen is known to cause allergic reactions and affect cognitive performance in around 20% of the population. Although pollen season peaks when students take high-stakes exams, the effect of pollen allergies on school performance has received nearly no attention from economists. Using a student fixed effects model and administrative Norwegian data, this paper finds that increasing the ambient pollen levels by one standard deviation at the mean leads to a 2.5% standard deviation decrease in test scores, with potentially larger effects for allergic students. There also appear to be longer-run effects. The findings imply that random increases in pollen counts reduce test scores for allergic students relative to their peers, who consequently will be at a disadvantage when competing for jobs or higher education. This paper contributes to the literature by illuminating the interplay between individual health and human capital accumulation, which in turn can impact long-run economic growth. Article History: Received 3 November 2015; Revised 11 May 2016; Accepted 24 May 2016 Article Note: (footnote) I have benefited from comments from Bjarne Strom, Torberg Falch, Kelly Bedard, Sofie Afseth, Nicholas Sheard, seminar and workshop participants at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the EEA conference in 2015 and two anonymous referees. I am grateful for data access and useful information from Hallvard Ramfjord at the Norwegian Pollen Forecast Services. All errors are my own.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.02.002 Byline: Daniel Avdic Abstract: Recent health care consolidation trends raise the important policy question whether improved emergency medical services and enhanced productivity can offset adverse quality effects from decreased access. This paper empirically analyzes how geographical distance from an emergency hospital affects the probability of surviving an acute myocardial infarction (AMI), accounting for health-based spatial sorting and data limitations on out-of-hospital mortality. Exploiting policy-induced variation in hospital distance derived from emergency hospital closures and detailed Swedish mortality data over two decades, results show a drastically decreasing probability of surviving an AMI as residential distance from a hospital increases one year after a closure occurred. The effect disappears in subsequent years, however, suggesting that involved agents quickly adapted to the new environment. Author Affiliation: CINCH, IFAU and University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany Article History: Received 7 May 2015; Revised 20 January 2016; Accepted 23 February 2016 Article Note: (footnote) [star] The author thanks two anonymous referees, Rudolf Blankart, Colin Cameron, Joseph Doyle, Marcus Eliason, Annika Herr, Per Johansson, Arizo Karimi, Martin Karlsson, Tobias Laun, Maarten Lindeboom, Maren Michaelsen, Robert Nuscheler, Soren Rud Christensen, Agne Suziedelyte, Thomas Siedler, Johan Vikstrom and seminar participants at Uppsala University, CINCH-Essen, IFAU-Uppsala, EALE in Turin, ESPE in Braga, University of Augsburg, the 13th Journees LAGV in Aix-de-Provence, 1st IAAE conference in London, 10th joint iHEA and ECHE Congress in Dublin, 29th EEA Annual Meeting in Toulouse, 1st Annual EuHEA PhD conference in Manchester, 23rd European Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics in Munich and the dggo workshop on 'Verteilungsfragen im Gesundheitswesen' in Hamburg. Financial support from FORTE (DNR 2004-2005, 2009-0826 and 2013-2482) is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title 'A matter of life and death? Hospital distance and quality of care: Evidence from emergency hospital closures and myocardial infarctions'.

Abstract Price transparency initiatives have recently emerged as a solution to the lack of health care price information available to consumers. This paper uses the staggered and nationwide diffusion of a leading internet-based price transparency platform to estimate the effects of price transparency on provider prices. I find a 1--4% reduction in provider prices for homogenous services, laboratory tests, but find no price response for differentiated services, office visits. Price responses are driven by active consumer use of price information. This paper demonstrates how reducing consumer search costs can spur limited firm price competition in health care markets. Author Affiliation: RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica 90401, United States Article History: Received 26 November 2018; Revised 3 May 2019; Accepted 3 June 2019 (footnote)[white star] This paper has benefited tremendously from advice from several individuals: Timothy Brown, Caroline Carlin, Hans Christensen, Paul Gertler, Ben Handel, Jonathan Kolstad, John Morgan, James Robinson, Neeraj Sood, Steven Tadelis, and Matthijs Wildenbeest. Seminar participants at ASHE, Berkeley, CBO, FTC, IIOS, Kellogg Healthcare Markets Conference, Minnesota SPH, RAND, Weill Cornell, and Yale SPH provided helpful feedback. Byline: Christopher M. Whaley [cwhaley@rand.org]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.12.002 Byline: Thomas Goldring, Fabian Lange, Seth Richards-Shubik Abstract: We develop a flexible test for changes in the SES-mortality gradient that accounts for changes in the distribution of education, the most commonly used marker of SES. We implement the test for the period between 1984 and 2006 in the United States using microdata from the Census and other surveys linked to death records. Using our flexible test, we find that the evidence for a change in the SES-mortality gradient is not as strong as previous research has suggested. Our results indicate that the gradient increased for females during this time period, but we cannot rule out that the gradient among males has not changed. Informally, the results suggest that the changes for females are mainly driven by the bottom of the education distribution. Author Affiliation: (a) Carnegie Mellon University, United States (b) McGill University, Canada and IZA, Germany (c) Lehigh University and NBER, United States Article History: Received 20 February 2015; Revised 14 December 2015; Accepted 16 December 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We are grateful for comments from Ellen R. Meara, David E. Frisvold, and participants at the NBER Health Economics Program Meeting and the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group. Thomas Goldring was supported in part by Carnegie Mellon University's Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research (PIER) funded by grant number R305B090023 from the U.S. Department of Education. This paper uses data obtained from the public-use file of the National Longitudinal Mortality Study. The file is provided to persons interested in research by the U.S. Census Bureau. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education, National Longitudinal Mortality Study, the Bureau of the Census, or the project sponsors: the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, and the National Center for Health Statistics.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.01.002 Byline: Kai Liu Abstract: This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of public health insurance in mitigating adverse outcomes associated with health shocks. Exploiting the rollout of a universal health insurance program in rural China, I find that total household income and consumption are fully insured against health shocks even without access to health insurance. Household labor supply is an important insurance mechanism against health shocks. Access to health insurance helps households to maintain investment in children's human capital during negative health shocks, which suggests that one benefit of health insurance could arise from reducing the use of costly smoothing mechanisms. Author Affiliation: (a) Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DD, UK (b) IZA, Germany Article History: Received 13 August 2015; Revised 18 December 2015; Accepted 5 January 2016 Article Note: (footnote) [star] I thank the editor and two anonymous referees whose comments improved the paper. I also would like to thank Arne Bigsten, Erzo Luttmer, Magne Mogstad, Marcos Vera and the participants at several seminars and conferences for helpful comments and discussions. All remaining errors are mine.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.09.011 Byline: Winnie Fung, Omar Robles Abstract: Even though syphilis can be prevented effectively and treated inexpensively, it has remained a global public health problem. Untreated congenital syphilis results in neonatal death, stillbirth, preterm birth, or congenital deformities. Many developing countries have recently instituted syphilis prevention programs in antenatal care, but there has not been a systematic study of the effects of such programs. This paper is the first to study antenatal testing laws initiated in the U.S. in 1938-1947 which mandated physicians and other persons permitted by law to attend to a pregnant woman to test her for syphilis. We use the variation in the timing of state antenatal testing laws to estimate the laws' effect on neonatal mortality rates and deaths due to preterm birth. Using 1931-1947 Vital Statistics data, we find that these laws decreased neonatal mortality rates of nonwhites by 3.15 per 1000 live births (a 8.6% reduction) while having no discernible impact on whites. The laws contributed to an 18% narrowing of the white-nonwhite neonatal mortality gap by 1947. Using 1950 U.S. Census data, we find that mandatory antenatal testing led to a 7% increase in the cohort size of nonwhite poor, which is consistent with the neonatal mortality results. We find universal antenatal testing to be very cost-effective, with an estimated $7600 cost (in 2013 dollars) per life-year saved. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Business and Economics, Wheaton College, 501 College Avenue, Wheaton, IL 60187, United States (b) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20212, United States Article History: Received 2 February 2015; Revised 27 September 2015; Accepted 29 September 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Wheaton College, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or Charles River Associates. We thank Lili Mejia and Harry Mak for excellent research assistance. Special thanks go to Chris Barrett, Alejandro Canadas, Xueyu Cheng, Jeremy Cook, Sisir Debnath, Milu Muyanga, Tom Pullum, Ji Yan, as well as participants at the 2014 Population Association of America Annual Meeting, 2013 Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference, 2012 Economics of Global Poverty Seminar at Calvin College, 2012 American Economic Association Annual Meeting, 2011 Southern Economic Association Annual Meeting, and 2011 Political Economy Seminar at Wheaton College for their comments and feedback. Financial support from the G.W. Aldeen Memorial Fund and Christian Scholars Foundation are gratefully acknowledged. All errors are the authors' own.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.09.004 Byline: Shamma Adeeb Alam Abstract: This paper examines the impact of parental illness on children's education. We find that only father's illness decreases children's school attendance. Father's illness also has long-term impacts on child education, as it decreases children's likelihood of completing primary school and leads to fewer years of schooling. However, we find no evidence that father's illness affects schooling through increased child labor. Instead, father's illness decreases household's income and reduces school attendance possibly because of the reduced ability of the family to afford education. In contrast, mother's illness and illness of other household members have no effect on children's schooling. Author Affiliation: Department of International Studies, Dickinson College, 28 North College St., Carlisle, PA 17013, United States Article History: Received 18 November 2014; Revised 15 September 2015; Accepted 17 September 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (WFHF) Grant No.: 2012-7263 and the Institute of International Education (IIE). WFHF and IIE did not play any role in the design of this study. Any error in the paper is solely mine. I wish to thank the journal editor, Luigi Siciliani, three anonymous reviewers, Claus Portner, Rachel Heath, Hendrik Wolff, Mary Kay Gugerty, Brian Dillon, Willa Friedman, Subha Mani, seminar participants at University of Washington, Seattle, and conference session participants at 2014 Northeastern Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC) Conference, 2013 Pacific Conference for Development Economics, 2013 Population Association of America (PAA) Conference, 2013 Northwest Development Workshop, 2013 Western Economic Association International Annual Conference, 2013 Southern Economic Association Annual Conference for valuable comments and suggestions.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.10.006 Byline: Brandy J. Lipton, Sandra L. Decker Abstract: Increasing the proportion of adults that have regular, comprehensive eye exams and reducing visual impairment due to uncorrected refractive error and other common eye health problems are federal health objectives. We examine the effect of vision insurance on eye care utilization and vision health outcomes by taking advantage of quasi-experimental variation in Medicaid coverage of adult vision care. Using a difference-in-difference-in-difference approach, we find that Medicaid beneficiaries with vision coverage are 4.4 percentage points (p Author Affiliation: National Center for Health Statistics, 3311 Toledo Road, Hyattsville, MD 20782, United States Article History: Received 24 November 2014; Revised 14 October 2015; Accepted 17 October 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] The majority of the work for this paper was completed while both authors were employed by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The work was finished while Brandy Lipton was employed by Social and Scientific Systems, Inc. as a full-time contractor to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and Sandra Decker was employed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Social and Scientific Systems, Inc., or the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This research was not sponsored and neither author has a conflict of interest to report.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.08.001 Byline: Irene Papanicolas, Alistair McGuire Abstract: * This is the first study to focus attention on highly substitutable surgical procedures that are subject to different reimbursement levels, to assess whether financial incentives affect clinical practice. * It has been commonly claimed as part of the managed care literature that clinical activity will shift in response to a financial incentive, but there has been little empirical evidence to support this claim in the UK setting. This paper uses a difference-in-difference approach to examine how Hip Replacement activity was affected in England after the introduction of differential reimbursement levels for uncemented and cemented Hip Replacements, as compared to Scotland where no such financial incentive existed. * The results from this paper suggest that the English NHS experienced much higher relative uptake rates of uncemented Hip Replacements, which secured higher reimbursement, as compared to cemented Hip Replacement, once case payment had been introduced in England, as compared to Scotland. * The increase in uncemented Hip Replacement activity is observed despite the fact that clinical guidance recommending cemented Hip Replacements had been produced by NICE, which is considered a benchmark for regulating English hospital activity. Author Affiliation: Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, UK Article History: Received 9 September 2014; Revised 1 May 2015; Accepted 2 August 2015

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.09.010 Byline: Reto Odermatt, Alois Stutzer Abstract: The consequences of tobacco control policies for individual welfare are difficult to assess, even more so when related consumption choices challenge people's willpower. We therefore evaluate the impact of smoking bans and cigarette prices on subjective well-being by analyzing data for 40 European countries and regions between 1990 and 2011. We exploit the staggered introduction of bans and apply an imputation strategy to study the effect of anti-smoking policies on people with different propensities to smoke. We find that higher cigarette prices reduce the life satisfaction of likely smokers. Overall, smoking bans are barely related to subjective well-being, but increase the life satisfaction of smokers who would like to quit smoking. The latter finding is consistent with cue-triggered models of addiction and the idea of bans as self-control devices. Author Affiliation: University of Basel, Faculty of Business and Economics, Center for Research in Economics and Well-Being, Peter Merian-Weg 6, 4002 Basel, Switzerland Article History: Received 2 July 2014; Revised 31 August 2015; Accepted 28 September 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We are grateful to Thomas Brandle, Francesca Cornaglia, Paul Dolan, Jan De Neve, Bruno Frey, Thorsten Henne, Andreas Kuhn, David Laibson, Markus Ludwig, Simon Luchinger, Guy Mayraz, Ulrich Matter, Michaela Slotwinski, Andrew Oswald and Matthew Rabin, as well as participants at the meetings of the AEA, EEA, EPCS, IIPF and SSES, the conferences on Markets and Happiness, on Public Happiness and on the measurement of SWB at the OECD, the seminars at DIW Berlin, LSE, and the Universities of Basel, Lausanne, Torino, Zaragoza and Zurich for helpful comments, and to Charlotte Ruetz for excellent research assistance. Reto Odermatt acknowledges financial support from the WWZ Forum. This paper is a substantially extended version of our conference paper entitled 'Smoking bans and life satisfaction in Europe' of March 2011.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.09.003 Byline: Gabriela Flores, Michael Ingenhaag, Jurgen Maurer Abstract: Complementing the commonly used concepts of evaluative wellbeing and decision utility, emotional wellbeing and experienced utility are important welfare criteria to assess individuals' subjective wellbeing, especially for valuing health and disability. Yet, almost all empirical evidences on the link between disability and experienced wellbeing come from developed countries. This paper studies the relationship between old-age disability and experienced utility in five low- and middle-income countries. Using data on individual time use and activity-specific affective experiences from an abbreviated version of the Day Reconstruction Method, we document a strong negative association between disability and experienced utility. These differences in experienced utility by disability status are exclusively due to worse activity-specific affective experiences among persons with disabilities. By contrast, disability-related differences in time use provide small compensating effects. Interventions or technologies that facilitate daily life hold most promise to improve experienced utility among persons with disabilities in the developing world. Author Affiliation: (a) Institute of Health Economics and Management (IEMS), Department of Economics (DEEP), Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC), University of Lausanne, Switzerland (b) IEMS, DEEP, HEC, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (c) Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA), Munich, Germany (d) Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA (e) RAND Corporation, Washington DC, USA (f) Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), Switzerland Article History: Received 18 July 2014; Revised 30 June 2015; Accepted 16 September 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We would like to thank Mark Dusheiko, Michael Hurd, Arie Kapteyn, Bas van der Klaauw, Owen O'Donnell, Florian Pelgrin, Susann Rohwedder, Pascal St-Amour, Martin Salm, Jonathan Skinner, Arthur Stone, Gema Zamarro, as well as seminar participants at the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California, the Institute of Health Economics and Management at the University of Lausanne, the Swiss Health Economics Workshop, the 2013 Conference on the Advances in Happiness Economics in Rotterdam, the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences, the 2014 PhD Seminar on Health Economics and Policy in Grindelwald, the Venice International University's 2014 Summer Institute on Ageing, the 2014 ASHEcon conference, and the 2014 Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society for valuable comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank two anonymous referees and the editor, David Cutler, whose comments have greatly improved this paper. Remaining errors are solely the responsibility of the authors.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.08.008 Byline: Lyudmyla Sonchak Abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of state-level Medicaid reimbursement rates for obstetric care on prenatal care utilization across demographic groups. It also uses these rates as an instrumental variable to assess the importance of prenatal care on birth weight. The analysis is conducted using a unique dataset of Medicaid reimbursement rates and 2001-2010 Vital Statistics Natality data. Conditional on county fixed effects, the study finds a modest, but statistically significant positive relationship between Medicaid reimbursement rates and the number of prenatal visits obtained by pregnant women. Additionally, higher rates are associated with an increase in the probability of obtaining adequate care, as well as a reduction in the incidence of going without any prenatal care. However, the effect of an additional prenatal visit on birth weight is virtually zero for black disadvantaged mothers, while an additional visit yields a substantial increase in birth weight of over 20g for white disadvantaged mothers. Author Affiliation: SUNY Oswego, Department of Economics, 425 Mahar Hall, Oswego, NY 13126, United States Article History: Received 30 September 2014; Revised 18 August 2015; Accepted 18 August 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] I am very grateful to Prof. Thomas Mroz for his help and advice with this paper. Special thanks to Brian Ardan, Tim Bersak, Jacob Burgdorf and Eric Makela and the participants of Clemson University Labor Economics Workshop for their comments and help with this work. Additionally, I am thanking two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on this paper. All remaining mistakes are my own.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.10.001 Byline: Yuping Tsai Abstract: This paper exploits Social Security law changes to identify the effect of Social Security income on the use of formal and informal home care by the elderly. Results from an instrumental variables estimation strategy show that as retirement income increases, elderly individuals increase their use of formal home care and become less likely to rely on informal home care provided to them by their children. This negative effect on informal home care is most likely driven by male children withdrawing from their caregiving roles. The empirical results also suggest that higher Social Security benefits would encourage the use of formal home care by those who would not have otherwise used any type of home care and would also encourage the use of both types of home care services among elderly individuals. Author Affiliation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States Article History: Received 29 May 2014; Revised 18 August 2014; Accepted 5 October 2014 Article Note: (footnote) [star] The content of this paper does not reflect the official opinion of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the paper lies entirely with the author.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.05.001 Byline: Peter Eibich Abstract: * This paper estimates the mechanisms behind the health effects of retirement. * Financial incentives in the German pension system are exploited for identification. * Retirement improves health and reduces healthcare utilization. * Relief from work-related strain, sleep and exercise are identified as mechanisms. Author Affiliation: (a) DIW Berlin, Mohrenstrasse 58, 10117 Berlin, Germany (b) Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department for Population Health, University of Oxford, UK (c) University of Hamburg, Germany Article History: Received 29 July 2014; Revised 5 February 2015; Accepted 22 May 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] I gratefully acknowledge generous support under 'BASEII' by the Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung (BMBF; 'Federal Ministry of Education and Research', 16SV5537). I would like to thank Adam Lederer for excellence in editing this paper. Moreover, I thank Yu Aoki, Alexandra Avdeenko, Arnab Bhattacharjee, Brigitte Dormont, Mark Duggan, Mathilde Godard, Nabanita Datta Gupta, Martin Kroh, Peter Kuhn, Paul Lambert, Maarten Lindeboom, Taps Maiti, Raymond Montizaan, Erik Plug, Mark Schaffer, Hendrik Schmitz, Mathias Schumann, Thomas Siedler, Ola Vestad, Nicolas R. Ziebarth, Andrew Street, and two anonymous referees for their for their helpful comments and discussions. The research reported in this paper is not the result of a for-pay consulting relationship. My employer does not have a financial interest in the topic of the paper that might constitute a conflict of interest.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.03.005 Byline: Bernard Fortin, Myra Yazbeck Abstract: This paper aims at opening the black box of peer effects in adolescent weight gain. Using Add Health data on secondary schools in the U.S., we investigate whether these effects partly flow through the eating habits channel. Adolescents are assumed to interact through a friendship social network. We propose a two-equation model. The first equation provides a social interaction model of fast food consumption. To estimate this equation we use a quasi maximum likelihood approach that allows us to control for common environment at the network level and to solve the simultaneity (reflection) problem. Our second equation is a panel dynamic weight production function relating an individual's Body Mass Index z-score (zBMI) to his fast food consumption and his lagged zBMI, and allowing for irregular intervals in the data. Results show that there are positive but small peer effects in fast food consumption among adolescents belonging to a same friendship school network. Based on our preferred specification, the estimated social multiplier is 1.15. Our results also suggest that, in the long run, an extra day of weekly fast food restaurant visits increases zBMI by 4.45% when ignoring peer effects and by 5.11%, when they are taken into account. Author Affiliation: (a) CIRPEE, IZA, CIRANO and Department of Economics, Universite Laval, Canada (b) School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia Article History: Received 1 February 2015; Accepted 12 March 2015 Article Note: (footnote) [star] We wish to thank Christopher Auld, Charles Bellemare, Luc Bissonnette, Vincent Boucher, Paul Frijters, Guy Lacroix, Paul Makdissi, Daniel L. Millimet, Kevin Moran, Bruce Shearer for useful comments and Yann Bramoulle, Badi Baltagi, Rokhaya Dieye, Habiba Djebbari, Tue Gorgens, Bob Gregory, Louis Hotte, Linda Khalaf, Lung fei Lee, Xin Meng and Rabee Tourky for useful discussions. The suggestions of two anonymous referees have substantially improved the paper. We are grateful to Rokhaya Dieye for outstanding assistance research. The usual disclaimer applies. Financial support from the Canada Research Chair in the Economics of Social Policies and Human Resources and le Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques economiques et l'emploi is gratefully acknowledged. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.

Shortage is common in many markets, such as those for human organs or blood, but the problem is often difficult to solve through price adjustment, given safety and ethical concerns. In this paper, we study two non-price methods that are often used to alleviate shortage for human blood. The first method is informing existing donors of a current shortage via a mobile message and encouraging them to donate voluntarily. The second method is asking the patient's family or friends to donate in a family replacement (FR) program at the time of shortage. Using 447,357 individual donation records across 8 years from a large Chinese blood bank, we show that both methods are effective in addressing blood shortage in the short run but have different implications for total blood supply in the long run. We compare the efficacy of these methods and discuss their applications under different scenarios to alleviate shortage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords Violence against women; Intimate partner violence; Developing countries; Rainfall shocks Abstract We investigate whether exposure to rainfall shocks affects the experience of physical intimate partner violence (P-IPV) among women in rural areas of the Peruvian Andes. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys over 2005--2014, we track changes in the probability that a woman experiences recent instances of P-IPV after being exposed to a rainfall shock during the last cropping season. Our results indicate that the probability that a woman experiences P-IPV increases by 8.5 percentage points (65 percent) after exposure to a dry, but not a wet, shock during the cropping season. We identify two complementary causal pathways of this effect: increased economic insecurity and poverty-related stress that deteriorates men's emotional well-being and mental health, and reduced female empowerment that affects women's ability to negotiate their preferences within the relationship. Author Affiliation: (a) Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), Peru (b) Paris School of Economics, France * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 4 February 2022; Revised 12 February 2023; Accepted 13 February 2023 (footnote)1 We are especially grateful to the Editor, Ana Balsa, and two anonymous referees whose valuable comments helped us to improve the paper. We also appreciate helpful comments from Fernando Fernández, Ana García, Marc Gurgand, Sylvie Lambert, and seminar participants and discussants at LACEA Health Economics Network Meeting (Bogotá, 2018), IUSSP Research Conference on Population, Poverty and Inequality (Michigan, 2019), UDEP Workshop for Young Economists (Lima, 2020), International Conference on Development Economics (Bordeaux, 2021), Applied Student and Postdoc Workshop (Barcelona, 2022), and PSE. We thank Mauricio Espinoza for sharing data from the Peruvian National Agricultural Censuses and Nicolás Domínguez for providing outstanding research assistance. Any errors are our own. Byline: Juan-José Díaz [jjdiaz@grade.org.pe] (a), Victor Saldarriaga [saldarriaga.victor@gmail.com] (b,*,1)

Keywords Referral; Chronic care; PCP; Specialist; Moral hazard; Team Abstract This paper studies referral strategy and effort provision of a primary care physician and a specialist who are responsible for the treatment of chronically ill patients who can be in a mild or severe condition. Two organizational settings are compared, a team in which physicians cooperate and solo practices in which they do not. Team care is strictly superior to solo practice care if the difference in expected treatment costs between disease severities is relatively larger for the primary care physician. Otherwise, solo practice care is weakly superior to team care under reasonable assumptions. Author Affiliation: Universität Hamburg, Department of Socioeconomics and Hamburg Center for Health Economics, Esplanade 36, 20354 Hamburg, Germany Article History: Received 10 October 2022; Revised 10 February 2023; Accepted 16 February 2023 (footnote)[white star] I thank Burkhard Hehenkamp, Patrick Imcke, Mathias Kifmann, Johanna Kokot, Inés Macho-Stadler, Gerd Mühlheußer, Pau Olivella, David Pérez-Castrillo, Luigi Siciliani, Renee Stark, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. This study was supported by a research grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (grant number BMBF 01EH1601A). Byline: Malte Griebenow [Malte.Griebenow@uni-hamburg.de]

Keywords Birth weight; Infant health; Cash transfer; Child benefit Highlights * Starting universal child benefits in pregnancy improves infant health * Babies born to younger mothers, particularly those on a low income, benefit the most * These effects cannot be explained by antenatal health attendance, nutrition, or smoking * Reductions in stress during pregnancy remain a possible mechanism * Birth weight effects from cash transfers are larger than previously thought Abstract Child benefits are typically paid from birth. This paper asks whether starting universal child benefits in pregnancy leads to improvements in infant health. Leveraging administrative birth registry and hospital microdata from England and Wales, I study the effects of the Health in Pregnancy Grant, a universal conditional cash transfer equivalent to three months of child benefit (190 GBP) as a lump sum to pregnant mothers from 2009 to 2011. I exploit quasi-experimental variation in eligibility with a regression discontinuity design in the date of birth of the baby. I find that the policy increased birth weight by 8--12 grams on average, reduced low birth weight ( Author Affiliation: STICERD, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom Article History: Received 19 May 2021; Revised 27 February 2023; Accepted 11 March 2023 (footnote)[white star] I gratefully acknowledge funding from The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) and the LSE Department of Social Policy Titmuss Meinhardt research fund. I am indebted to Daniel Sturm and Kitty Stewart for their advice and guidance. I thank Berkay Özcan, Giulia Giupponi, Camille Landais, Gabriel Leite Mariante, Emiliano Sandri, Elisabetta De Cao, Ania Zylbersztejn, Tania Burchardt, Tammy Campbell, and attendees of a CASE Researchers' Workshop for helpful conversations and comments on earlier drafts. Byline: Mary Reader [m.reader@lse.ac.uk]

Keywords Youth indoor tanning prohibitions; Tanning salons; Quasi-experiment Abstract Indoor tanning beds (ITBs) emit UV light at high intensity and have been classified as carcinogenic to humans by the World Health Organization since 2009. We are the first to study the role of state laws prohibiting youths from indoor tanning using a difference-in-differences research design. We find that youth ITB prohibitions reduced population search intensity for tanning-related information. Among white teen girls, ITB prohibitions reduced self-reported indoor tanning and increased sun protective behaviors. We also find that youth ITB prohibitions significantly reduced the size of the indoor tanning market by increasing tanning salon closures and reducing tanning salon sales. Author Affiliation: (a) University Distinguished Professor and E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Economics, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Vanderbilt University, 306 Calhoun Hall, Nashville, TN 37027, United States (b) Assistant Professor of Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 221 Stockbridge Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, United States (c) Assistant Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, 306 Calhoun Hall, Nashville, TN 37027, United States * Corresponding authors. Article History: Received 30 December 2021; Revised 13 December 2022; Accepted 9 February 2023 (footnote)â° We are grateful to Aaron Gamino, Kristoffer Jackson, Jennifer Nguyen, and Jesus Ulloa for valuable research assistance on earlier versions of this project. Mika Hamer, Natalie Malak, and seminar and conference participants at the 19th Annual Canadian Health Economics Study Group, the 2021 ASHEcon virtual conference, the 2021 SEA conference, the Fall 2021 NBER Health Economics meeting, the Virtual Essen Health Economics seminar, Atlanta Fed, Ball State University, Claremont Graduate University, Georgia State University, Tulane University, University of Oklahoma, Wharton, and Vanderbilt University provided helpful comments. Some of the results in this paper are based on restricted-use and/or proprietary data. Readers interested in obtaining access can contact the authors. We thank Don Walls for answering questions about the NETS data. Carpenter and Marcus gratefully acknowledge funding from the American Cancer Society grant #133789-RSGI-19-193-01-CPHPS. Results do not imply their endorsement. All errors are our own. Byline: Christopher S. Carpenter [christopher.s.carpenter@vanderbilt.edu] (a,*), Brandyn F. Churchill [bfchurchill@umass.edu] (b), Michelle Marcus [michelle.marcus@vanderbilt.edu] (c,*)

Keywords Weight control; Addiction; Eating disorder; Physical exercise; Health deficits; Mortality Abstract In this paper, I integrate a theory of body image, weight control, and addiction in a life cycle model with health deficit accumulation in order to explain the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa and its impact on health and longevity. Individuals consume normal goods and foods and can work off excess calories with physical exercise. There exists a healthy body mass index and deviations from it increasingly cause health deficits due to obesity or underweight. There exists also a subjective target weight and being heavier than target weight causes a loss of utility from body image. Anorexia is initiated in individuals who are particularly successful in weight control and prone to addiction. Addiction to weight control motivates anorexic individuals to perpetually adjust their target weight downwards and to eat less and exercise more. With declining weight, health deficits accumulate faster and mortality risk rises. I calibrate the model to an average American woman with bmi 28. Due to weight loss addiction, the bmi declines to a level of 15 and causes an expected loss of 15 years of life. I also discuss potential therapies and recovery from the disease. Author Affiliation: University of Goettingen, Department of Economics, Platz der Goettinger Sieben 3, 37073 Goettingen, Germany Article History: Received 16 February 2022; Revised 24 December 2022; Accepted 2 January 2023 (footnote)[white star] I would like to thank Carl-Johan Dalgaard, Johannes Schünemann, Daniel Wiesen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Declarations of interest: none. Byline: Holger Strulik [holger.strulik@wiwi.uni-goettingen.de]

Keywords Spatial dependence; Strategic complementarity; Additional fees; Competition; Differentiation Highlights * We analyze the pricing behavior of more than 4000 free-billing physicians in France. * We find that physicians' prices are strategic complements. * We show that the strength of strategic complementarity increases with physician density. * We do not find evidence for quality competition but for potential noncompetitive behavior. * We highlight key mechanisms to explain the continuous (and heterogeneous) rise of additional fees. Abstract Concerns about healthcare affordability have grown in France as physician additional fees have increased threefold in the last 20 years. In this paper, we develop an innovative structural spatial framework to provide new insights into free-billing physician pricing behavior. We empirically test a closed-form solution of a circular city model with heterogeneous physicians by using a unique geolocalized database that covers more than 4000 private practitioners in three specializations (ophthalmology, gynecology and pediatrics). We highlight a positive spatial dependence in prices for all specialties that increases with physician density. This result reflects markets in which both prices are strategic complements and incentives for quality competition are low. We also find evidence of potential noncompetitive behavior for two specialties for which price and competition measures are positively related. These findings in the context of a growing spatial concentration of free-billing physicians emphasize key mechanisms explaining the increasing of additional fees. Author Affiliation: (a) SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d'Azur (GREDEG), OFCE SciencesPo, France (b) CONICET - Departamento de Economía, Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Ruta Nac. 36-Km 601 (X5804BYA), Argentina * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 26 January 2022; Revised 12 December 2022; Accepted 1 January 2023 Byline: Benjamin Montmartin [benjamin.montmartin@skema.edu] (a,*), Marcos Herrera-Gómez [mherreragomez@conicet.gov.ar] (b)

Keywords Latent health; Panel data; Maximum likelihood estimation Abstract Many dynamic structural models that include health as a state variable use categorical self-reported health status (SRHS) as their sole empirical measure of health. Commonly, transition probabilities among discrete health states are calculated directly from one-wave-ahead transitions observed in panel data. The predicted dynamics of SRHS generated from these calculations rapidly deviate from empirical transitions more than one wave ahead, as the assumption of a Markovian process is not satisfied. Consequently, models that treat SRHS as a true representation of health are not well calibrated to accurately match the long term dynamics of individual health. This paper specifies a model in which SRHS is a noisy measure of a continuous latent health state. I estimate the model by maximum likelihood on several panel datasets, exploiting long sequences of SRHS rather than simple wave-to-wave transitions. By accounting for transitory reporting error, the latent health model is able to match both short-run and long-run SRHS transitions up to twenty years in the future, as well as other features of empirical SRHS dynamics. Moreover, the measure of latent health is at least as good at predicting other outcomes (including mortality, labor supply, and medical expenses) as SRHS itself. To aid structural modelers in replacing their representation of health, I provide simple software tools for generating a discretized latent health process, and for filtering observed sequences of SRHS into (a distribution of) latent health. Author Affiliation: University of Delaware, Department of Economics, 416B Purnell Hall, Newark DE 19716, United States of America Article History: Received 18 February 2022; Revised 22 September 2022; Accepted 2 January 2023 (footnote)[white star] Notes: Many thanks to Svetlana Pashchenko, Chung Tran, and Fabian Lange for helpful conversations early in this project's life-cycle, and to the insightful feedback provided by referees at the Journal of Health Economics. A complete reproduction archive is available at http://www.github.com/mnwhite/HiddenHealth-public, including all data and code used in the project, as well as many auxiliary figures not included in the main text. A lightweight archive with tools for researchers to apply the latent health model is available at http://www.github.com/mnwhite/LatentHealthLite. Byline: Matthew N. White [mnwecon@udel.edu]

Keywords Housing wealth; Health care utilization; HRS Abstract Do wealthier individuals use more health care services than those less affluent? Our paper addresses this question by examining the relationship between housing wealth and health care utilization. Exploiting fluctuations in the U.S. housing market, we estimate the effect of unanticipated wealth shocks on older adults' health care utilization, using county-year variation in house prices to construct an instrumental variable. Using data from the 1996--2016 Health and Retirement Study, we find that an increase in wealth significantly increases numbers of doctor visits, prescription drugs, outpatient surgery, and dental services. Notably, an economic downturn like that in the Great Recession, when housing wealth declined by 16 percent on average, could reduce the utilization of prescription drugs by 0.4 percent, outpatient services by 0.5 percent, dental care by 0.6 percent, and numbers of doctor visits by 0.5 visits annually. Author Affiliation: (a) School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia (b) Department of Health Services Research & Policy, Australian National University, Australia (c) Centre for the Business and Economics of Health, University of Queensland, Australia * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 30 August 2021; Revised 17 January 2023; Accepted 20 January 2023 Byline: My Tran [my.tran@anu.edu.au] (a,b,c,*), Brenda Gannon [brenda.gannon@uq.edu.au] (a,c), Christiern Rose [christiern.rose@uq.edu.au] (a)

Keywords Activation; Long-term sickness absence; Graded return-to-work Abstract While there is increasing evidence that graded return-to-work is an effective tool for the rehabilitation of sick-listed workers, little is known on the optimal timing and level of grading in return-to-work trajectories. We use administrative data from a Dutch private workplace reintegration provider to fill this gap. In order to correct for the selection bias inherent to the evaluation of activation strategies, we exploit the discretionary room of the case managers in setting up treatment plans. We find that graded return-to-work has the potential to speed up the recovery process, but does not necessarily help rehabilitate workers who would otherwise have not rehabilitated. Work resumption can be achieved faster when graded return-to-work is started earlier and may permanently increase when started at a higher rate of work resumption. These findings however do not hold for individuals who have problems related to mental health. Author Affiliation: (a) Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9500, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands (b) Netspar, The Netherlands (c) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands (d) Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands (e) IZA Germany * Corresponding author. Article History: Received 9 April 2018; Revised 19 March 2019; Accepted 29 March 2019 (footnote)[white star] The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from Instituut Gak for this research project. They also thank the referees to this paper, Benedicte Rouland, Rob Euwals and Bertjan Teunissen for detailed comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the paper, as well as seminar participants that gave feedback at the EALE conference in St. Gallen in 2017 and the research seminars at CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, the University of Antwerp and RWI in Essen. Byline: Lieke Kools [l.kools@law.leidenuniv.nl] (a,b,*), Pierre Koning [p.w.c.koning@law.leidenuniv.nl] (a,c,d,e)